Hand Knits

Summer is not my favorite season. I am not a fan of hot, humid weather (something we’ve had in abundance this year in the Midwest). But I did find beauty in the visual and tried to capture some of those moments whenever I had my camera with me.

After going through all my photos from this summer, here are some of my favorites, spanning from June through August.

PS- This Queen Anne’s lace is a preview of what you will read in the next post…

Finn and Nora are twins, born right before Easter 2018. They both are dark-fleeced with a bit of tan markings, but now the fleece has covered any lighter coloring. In the early photos, Finn has the most tan and white on his face, Nora not so much. Gradually, it gets harder to tell them apart. Thankfully, the longer I’ve known them, their personalities stand out more than their fleece color. They love to prance around at dusk and leap off of straw bales. They are now eating hay and grass as they are slowly weaning off. Mum likes to keep tabs on them to make sure they are behaving. Penny is like the fun aunt they hang out with, but sometimes leads them in mischief. Finn likes to make little hmmm noises like he’s humming. Nora is quiet like Freya. It has been such a joy watching them grow and soon they will be six months old.

This story has been waiting in my notes for such a long time! After an arduous winter and lambing hardships, the arrival of spring has rejuvenated my spirit. In between lots of outdoor spring projects and work in general, I am making time to work on the blog again. Even though it’s a little late, I am relieved to finally write about my first lamb experience…

I had to tear myself away from those sweet newborn lambs to leave for the Good Friday service. To be honest, I felt like my joy was out of place while attending, but I didn’t think my premature Easter joy was disrespectful. God loves lambs.

This first lambing season didn’t go as expected. I was as prepared as I could be, but being prepared doesn’t matter when there are complications that cannot always be fixed. The first birth back in January (Mum’s) was very hard for me to experience, with her stillborn lamb. The next mama ewe was Dahlia, my favorite sheep. I couldn’t bear to write about her after it happened. She needed assistance during labor, but no one was able to get her twins out. Our regular vet was unreachable. After hours of other vets trying, not one person was able to help her. We lost Dahlia and her babies that night. People kept telling me that these things happen, and that it wasn’t my fault. As the shepherd to my flock though, I was determined to do the best I could and be ready when the final two gave birth. Penny was the next mama. In the middle of the night, she went into labor with a breech lamb that I helped deliver. The delivery went so smoothly! At first it seemed like all was well, but the lamb had a facial deformity that affected his breathing. Sadly, he would never be able to breathe enough to sustain his life outside of the womb, and passed before morning.

After those three mothers had lost their lambs, my hopes for Freya, the last pregnant ewe, were not too high. But I put the pressure on myself—I couldn’t let Freya’s birth go unnoticed. I had to be there to help and do as much as I could. So, I had alarms set every hour and a half throughout the night and checked on her just as frequently during the daytime.

I lived in a precarious state of limbo for three weeks.

Then on Good Friday, around noon, I was outside visiting the sheep. I saw Freya pawing at the ground and going into the small pen in the shelter where she never chose to spend time before. I grabbed a cinder block and sat down on it nearby to watch her. She started straining with what I hoped was a contraction.

Eventually, the water bag showed up. I ran through my mental lambing checklist: first comes the water bag, then about 30 minutes later I should see the hoofs, facing the proper way for a normal presentation… I hurried inside to get my box of lamb stuff that had been sitting prepared for weeks. One eye was on my watch, counting the minutes and knowing that I would have to make a decision pretty soon. She’s a first-time mother though, so would any of those time frames really be accurate for her?

Materials acquired, I returned to my cinder block. Right on time, two little hooves showed up. They were pointing down. Good. Then she pushed again. Seeing the joints confirmed that these were the front legs, and soon I could see the nose. The lamb was in proper presentation, like a little diver.

Within a few more minutes, Freya successfully delivered her baby, all on her own. After it dropped to the ground, she rushed away. I grabbed my towel and cleaned away the goop from the lamb’s nose and mouth. Freya was outside of the shelter, and my family who came outside to watch said she was starting to deliver another lamb (which wasn’t too surprising, she was HUGE). Since she was preoccupied, I worked on drying her first lamb.

It was a boy, a black and brown woolly body with cute white markings on his face. His twin, a girl, was born not too long after. We moved the little family into the shelter and closed the jug gate. With heat lamps lit and little coats on the lambs, we tried to make it as warm as possible in the below freezing weather. I sat in the hay next to them for probably two hours, watching them stand up all wobbly and trying to figure out how to nurse. Once I was satisfied they were all okay, I headed back inside to get ready to go to church. I wasn’t sure whether to heave a sigh of relief or whoop in triumph. A long period of Lenten sacrifice had ended in Easter joy.

Thus ends the long and unexpected journey of my first lambing season. In hindsight, I am glad to have experienced it all, but I still mourn the lives lost in the harsh realities of nature.

But now it is springtime, and everyone is doing wonderfully. You’ll get to meet the lambs soon, so don’t fret! I’ll have photos and their names coming up in a happy little post next. Until then, here’s a peek from the day they were born. Thanks for following along with this little flock in the Driftless region.

I love looking at pictures of winter and imagining the aesthetic of a pleasant snowfall—ice skating, snowy parks, cozy knitted woolens, even shoveling sounds appealing in the beginning of the season.

But after a few months of driving in snow, slipping on ice and falling in poo (yes, that happened), and bundling up until I look like the little brother in A Christmas Story every time I step out the door, the shine has worn off and I’m wishing for winter to end and dreaming of spring.

Well, it’s not spring here in the Midwest and it won’t be for some time yet.

So, I thought I’d look through my photos that I took this winter and share some of the beauty of the season.

The ducks never seem to mind the snow! But do not expect to see any chicken photos in this post. They stay inside their covered run.

Hadley the Great Pyrenees pup loves the snow. Less than a year old still, this is her first winter. She’s super fluffy with her thick white winter coat and seems to thrive in what I consider to be rather chilly weather. She has a grand old time playing in the snow too. While she’s in mid-run, she puts her face down to the ground and scoops up fresh snow for a drink on the go. So far we haven’t had any predator problems, thanks to her watchfulness. In her spare time, Hadley likes to go sledding with the kids.

The sheep have no problem sitting outside of their shelter during the snowfalls. The snow just collects on their backs, and doesn’t even melt off because their bodies are so insulated by wool. I’m the one who brushes it off if there’s one too many inches piled up on top of them. There was one day when Penny (the brown one) was so snowy that I had to look closely to tell her apart from the others.

Maybe it’s the little things.

This last photo is looking out my bedroom window. I recently created a new Pinterest board for photographs of views from windows. That pin board has no purpose other than letting me save pictures that I find beautiful. I realized that most of them are in a spring setting, which is probably showing where my subconscious wants to be. But when I stop to think about it, I already have a great view outside my own window. Sweet animals, cheerful yellow chicken coop, lots of snow-covered trees are what I see at the moment.

These few photos are my views that I found amidst the dreary long winter.

It’s taken me a while to decide what to share with you this week. I was in the middle of a huge waiting game the past few weeks didn’t know how it would all end. Now that it’s over, I can finally sit down and tell you about it.

Chrysanthemum (Mum, for short), my light Moorit-colored ewe, was pregnant with a lamb or two.

When we got her in November, we had no idea if she was bred. The flock she came from had a ram with the ewes for a few months, so if she was pregnant, there was a large time window for a possible birth. (Knowing what I know now, the date of intentional breeding is very important to me and is in the best interest of the well-being of my sheep.)

By late December, we were positive Mum was pregnant. Her sides were so much larger than before, and her udder began to develop too. We researched how to know when a sheep is ready to give birth. We equipped ourselves with all the tools, milk replacement, and (because the weather had been consistently below freezing) all the little lamb sweaters we might need. All we had to do was wait.

Then Mum started spending more time in the shelter by herself, sometimes pawing at the ground and shifting around. Was it getting close to lambing time? This lasted for a few days, and she seemed more and more tired every day. I realized that she refused to lie down and looked pained. After calling the previous owner to see if this had happened in Mum’s previous pregnancy the year before, we were told that it was in fact not normal—call the vet, she said, and expect the worst…her lambs had probably died from a prolonged labor.

But the vet had the opposite to say. Apparently she hadn’t been in labor, and probably wouldn’t be for days still. While examining her though, he found an injury in her lower back/hip (the s.i. joint) that had probably occurred in the past, but was made serious by her added weight and loosened hips from pregnancy. So he helped her lie down, and prescribed an anti-inflammatory to help relieve her pain so she could be in a better state when it was time to lamb.

Each morning, I gave her the medicine—pills mashed up in some water—which she took stoically, even though I could tell she hated the taste. I brought the small water tub up to her face several times a day so she could drink, and hand-fed her hay and minerals until she could stand up and get food and water on her own a few days later.

It was so hard to watch her lying there so helpless, with a little lamb inside of her. I watched her heavy breathing and could see her pain. There were a couple nights when she would rest her head against my hand and I thought she was telling me she might die soon, but the next morning I would find her still trying to keep going. Mum easily could’ve given up, but was holding on and enduring it all for her lamb.

After almost a week she was getting up and down easier, though she was very stiff and a little unsteady. She rejoined the other three sheep and was enjoying sitting in the sun and watching the ducks who hang out by the sheep’s fence. Throughout all of this, I was constantly checking her rear and udder, looking for signs of upcoming labor.

Then yesterday morning, my mom went outside earlier than me. She hurried back to the house and banged on the window saying, “There’s a lamb, get out here!”

I grabbed some towels, put on my overalls, coat, and gloves as quick as I could and ran outside, trying not to slip on ice as I carried supplies. I could barely believe it. After all those days of constant vigilance and care, Mum had begun labor overnight, with no prior warning.

The lamb had just been born. It was warm and Mum was turning around to start licking away the lining. My mom picked it up and I cleared the lamb’s nose and mouth. But there was no breath. We tried and tried to get it breathing, but nothing came. After thinking back, my mom realized that she hadn’t felt a strong heartbeat either when she first picked it up. I don’t remember how long we spent trying to warm up and revive the lamb and make it breathe.

Mum was baaing softly the whole time, licking her lamb and nudging it. It never took a breath.

I went inside to call the vet. He gave instructions on what to do if Mum still had to deliver a twin, and to call if there were any issues. The first lamb was most likely a stillborn, he thought. The rough pregnancy could’ve caused a premature birth, or her labor may have been simply too long and strained. We will never know how long it lasted though, because it started too early in the morning.

When I went back outside, Mum had her head resting on the lamb, now clean and dry—perfect-looking in every way. It was a ewe lamb. She had black and brown markings, probably what would’ve been considered moorit, like her mother.

It was awful to take the lifeless lamb away from Mum, but it had to be done if she was going to deliver a second lamb. I got a lawn chair and my hat and set up camp to wait for another lamb that I was hoping Mum had still inside her. I waited for over two hours after the lamb had been born, but she passed the afterbirth and nothing else happened. Frozen and heartbroken, I finally gave up hope that she would have another baby and went back inside.

Today, Mum is doing better. The weight of the pregnancy finally off of her hips seems to help her stand easier. I can’t tell if her quiet attitude today is because she’s worn out from labor, or if she is still feeling the loss of her lamb…maybe it’s both. It was obvious that she would’ve been a good mother. It’s just sad that because of her injury and all the complications she had, she will never be bred again. That sweet little ewe lamb was her last one.

We will continue to care for Mum and help her heal as best as we are able. While this experience was very difficult and sad, it is all a part of life. My grandma wrote a sweet consolation to my mom and me this afternoon:

“Remember that everything is ultimately part of God’s plan, as awful as it sometimes appears. He had a reason for putting all of you through it. That’s not a copout—how could it be otherwise? I sure don’t want it not to be true! Where would we be without His constant presence in our lives! And that baby lamb is with Him in Heaven now. I think He has a special love for lambs, since they were present at the birth of His Son, along with the shepherds. I thank Him for these experiences; and I pray that I understand what he’s asking me to learn, share, say, see, do.”

All life is precious.

The connected life of a Mum and her lamb was very special to me.

Thank you to all of you who were keeping up with Mum’s hardships as they were happening. Though this was my first experience with lambing, I hope it will not be my last. I enjoy my sheep very much and hope to share the joy with you all through Driftless Woolens.

About

I’m Katherine of Driftless Woolens. Fiber is my passion and I am captivated by hand knit garments. Follow along with my newest adventure in raising a small flock of sheep on the family’s homestead. This blog tells stories of the realities of a sheep-filled life, and records the simple beauty of spending more time outside.

Follow Blog via Email

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Katherine Severt and Driftless Woolens with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.